Summary
Trump just presided over one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in modern history, with flared tempers, raised voices, and shredded protocol.
Never before has a U.S. president bullied and berated an adversary, never mind an ally, in such a public way.
During a tense Oval Office meeting, Trump and JD Vance attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demanding he accept a peace deal with Russia or lose U.S. support.
The conversation devolved into shouting, with Trump accusing Zelenskyy of being ungrateful and “gambling with World War III.”
The meeting ended in chaos, with no agreement reached.
I just saw an ad for G20, a fiction where some terrorists kidnap all the leaders of the G20 at the meeting. But don’t worry, the US president frees herself, and she’s going full Liam Neeson to free everyone and get revenge.
LOL completely unbelievable
What would instead happen with the US president that is in charge now: if you free me I will help you with all your requests and I will personally execute the hostages
I’ve heard shows like Madam Secretary and The West Wing be considered, akin to Star Trek, “competence porn.”
The idea, the fantasy, that the people making the critical decisions that affect so many people are consulting experts, weighing heavy costs, consulting the law, and are kept up at night because they care so deeply for making the best call they can so they don’t let down all those who depend on them. These characters have been role models for leadership for generations at this point.
And here we are, in a complete fever dream of a failed state: With a convicted felon and failed reality show TV personality, his foreign billionaire handler, and a weak spineless, loud little dweeb we all forgot was even vice… burning the last vestiges of peace and goodwill all around themselves, handing us and our allies over in a competition with other fascists to be the world’s worst enemies, screaming at world leaders, destroying the environment out of spite, and heck, shilling beans from the oval office. Because why not.
Who’s close enough to this to do something about it? Where are the competent ones who will regain control of the bridge from these terrorists? Yeah, where’s our “G20 president”?
Well, I just remembered, we need to support people like Governor Janet Mills of Maine , and empower anyone any everyone who will stand up against this bullying.
Fucking Idiocracy is competence porn at this point, Camacho was an idiot but damn was he actually really competent if you think about the events of the movie.
Absolutely. Something about that movie’s premise was that the ignorance and takeover of corporate influence was the villain, but the leaders were just ignorant and rowdy, not actively acting out of hatred and malice towards… Everyone.
You’re right, been awhile since I’ve seen it but Camacho was being a tank-driving grenade-launching nut just to look cool. He didn’t aspire to invade neighbors or anything that we’re shown.
Once they could be taught, they could be reasoned with, even with their inflated egos, and they moved shockingly quickly to correct things because they wanted to be good, well-liked leaders, they just didn’t know how. (Oh, and limited film runtime lol)
You know, it’s known for it’s cynical humor but at its heart, I’d almost say it has a “noble dark” (as opposed to “grimdark”) tone: The world sucks, but the characters are shown to have a desire to do good at their core, once they see past the bullshit! :)
I’d go a bit further and say Camacho was actually pretty proactive, he did after all institute that nation wide intelligence test to find someone to tell him how to fix everything, and was humble enough to listen to that person once he found him.
I really like The West Wing. I’m currently going through it again.
It was always a hopeful show, but these days even the ‘bad guys’ in it start to look pretty appealing compared to what’s actually in the White House. At least the ones on the West Wing had fairly mundane motives and could be worked with to some extent.
If they made a current show inspired the actual White House, it would look more like Idiocracy than competency porn…